Japan Part 2: Now with photos!

[rallamajoop]

Friday night was taken up getting up to our new hotel and doing the mad last minute rush to get costumes finished and wigs styled and all the rest that always happens to certain people before a con no matter how organised we mean to be. The hotel was not cheap, and even less so because most of us were in single rooms rather than sharing, but it was a really nice place to stay for those few days and within quite easy walking distance of the TGS venue (which counts for a lot when you remember public transport was all we had available, most of Tokyo would be at least half an hour away by train, and the lines outside are known to stretch around the building by 7AM in the morning). Plus what with a lot of us going to bed at different times as plans got more complicated, those separate rooms to be proved a very handy thing to have, so I’m declaring it well worth every cent. Would not mind having the money to stay in places like that all through every holiday I take.

The not so fun part was getting there early enough, since not only did we have to allow for queues, we had costumes to sort out before we could leave. That pushed the wake up call back to 5:30, which is even less pleasant when you realise we didn’t arrive until very late the previous night. Ouch. This had me pretty worried because I don’t often sleep well in new places (doubly so if the curtains aren’t thick enough to stop light getting into the room and waking me up at sunrise), and I don’t function well on not much sleep, and this made a lot of our last trip to Japan a lot more miserable than it should have been. This time though… honestly, I don’t even know quite what made the different. Probably a lot of it was the excitement, though that sure didn’t kick during that last trip. Whatever it was, I spent this part of the trip (and a lot after it) on about four hours sleep a night, on top of several weeks of bad sleep before that, and felt fine practically the whole time. Until we found time to lie down for a minute or two anywhere and I crashed like a derailed train and had great difficulty getting up again. Seriously, I’m not complaining, but it was like I’d discovered some kind of sleep version of the Atkins diet – you do all the things conventional wisdom tells you not to do, yet somehow everything works even better than usual. or at least until you find out what all the nasty side effects are going to be

Anyway, up we got, grabbed some breakfast and threw on as much of our costumes as we could, and got to the queue about 7 or so, with plenty of time to wait until 9 AM rolled around and the thing actually opened.


The Queue - stretching on well out of sight in both directions

First call when we got inside was to head straight for the Squeenix booth where we were hoping to beat the worst of the queues for seats for the closed theatre where they show all their UBER EXCLUSIVE SECRET TRAILERS that the Squeenix propaganda machine jealously refuses to release to the world at large all in the name of building up the hype to boiler-point levels. (Bitter? Me? I don’t know what you’re talking about.) In reality, we’d only just found the end of the queue halfway across the building before the whole thing dissolved. It turned out there were no seats anymore – there was not even a queue for seats. Instead, they’d been giving out tickets for screenings later in the day, and they’d just run out. All the playable demos had the same story. If we wanted to get them, we’d have to get up even earlier the next morning. There was much debate over this over the rest of the day, but we decided it was worth a try.

The TGS is set out in three main halls, the last containing food and merchandise stalls, with covered spaces between them where cosplayers generally mark out a bit of wall for themselves and pose for photos. There are a lot of rules about cosplaying at TGS – costumes aren’t meant to be put on until you arrive (apparently it’ll lower the tone of the event if everyone can see lots of cosplayers entering, which is some of the worst bullshit I’ve ever heard – for Pete’s sake, it’s a gaming convention! - but against the Great Japanese Crazy, what can you do?), no weapons or large props of any kind, no taking photos in the main buildings – and those last two sound a bit harsh until you realise just how incredibly packed the buildings can get. There just isn’t any room to have people lugging big props around or holding things up by posing for a few snapshots. I mention this largely because the cosplay areas were where we spent a lot of the day.

So, for day one we were all cosplaying The World Ends With You (which is a Squeenix DS game which you should really all check out if you haven’t heard of it). Just about straight away we ran into a Japanese group cosplaying the same characters, so in keeping with the usual cosplay etiquette about those kind of things we ran over and took a whole bunch of photos with them.



We managed to get our photos taken for the Layers cosplay magazine – basically just by hanging around where they were set up for a couple of minutes until they asked us – which was really kind of awesome because they’re one of the best known cosplay publications in Japan and generally the kind of thing Western cosplayers just don’t ever get the chance to do. =3 We also got stopped and interviewed twice on camera by a couple of English speaking camera crews who’d come to the con and who seemed really pleased to have found some people to talk to who were both into all this cosplay stuff and spoke English.



One of said interviews has already been found up here, though I'm in it for all of about five seconds, and only velithya actually gets to talk on camera the way it was edited down. Pretty much what we were expecting though, I think.

The shame of the TGS is that it’s just so big that even if you avoid the worst queues and spend the whole weekend there you won’t get to see more than a fraction of it properly. There were so many good cosplayers there, but everything was so packed and everyone moving every which way that you were lucky to get photos of even half of them. We had of a bit of a look around the exhibits that day, but we left pretty early because a lot of us were pretty tired. pinneagig and I stuck around a bit longer, and I took the chance to track down the ArcSys booth before we left. This lead to an interesting little sequence along the lines of “Well, the map says it’s somewhere around here, oh there it is, and oh hey, there’s Ishiwatari Daisuke standing up in front of everyone for some kind of Overture demonstration…” But most of the talk was going to be completely lost on me and it was clearly going to be going on for a while longer, so we didn’t stick around very long.

I also had my moment of umbrella-awesome around when we were walking back (for context, it’d been raining a little that day when we arrived). It went something like this:
Me: Hey, do you still have your umbrella?
Pinneagig: O_O Oh no, I must’ve left it somewhere!
The TGS: [Is huge and imposing and clearly impossible to find anything you’ve lost in it ever again!]
Me: Oh look, there it is!
(For the record, no, she had not just dropped it then. We’d just happened to be passing the place she’d left it some hours beforehand.)

And then we went home to get some sleep.

I think technically I woke up with my 4:30 alarm the next morning, but all I remember for sure is being awake briefly and not sure why, falling asleep again, and finally waking up a second time to see that the clock said 5:30 AM and I was supposed to be at the convention hall by now. Most of that day’s costume – giant wig, contacts and all – got thrown into a bag in a hurry to be assembled on arrival. pinneagig and I (her being the only person who actually did get up on time that morning) headed down pretty soon after that, velithya and jaeroque followed not too far after us and k_chan009 and alyssea (who’d managed to score TM Revolution concert tickets for the night before and did not want to waste them not matter how little sleep they got) caught up a bit later on, and we all settled down for a nice long wait in the queue to get in. But it wasn’t raining and we had books to read, so it didn’t seem all that bad.

Of what we went through to get the Squeenix closed theatre tickets I will say only this: we all arrived in enough time to get through the queue quite easily with minimal fuss, and yet we still managed to do it the hard way. No, even harder than you’re probably thinking. ANYWAY, the important point is that we all scored tickets for sometime that morning, and I have to say, I was a bit dubious about what we could possibly see that would justify all that fuss to get there in time, but we all came out of the theatre without a doubt it had been totally worth everything. I’ve been lukewarm to freezing on a lot of Squeenix’s recent produce and a bit skeptical about what’s to come, but I am officially now looking forward to the KH: Birth By Sleep and Dissidia releases more than I’ve looked forward to anything in a while. Most of the FFXIII stuff looked pretty damn cool too. But more on that when I get to that Squeenix trip report I’ve been promising.

For bonus win, pinneagig and jaseroque got handed tickets for the Dissidia trial demos by some passers by who’d decided not to use them for some reason and apparently were quite big Aeris fans (ah, the advantages of showing up in cosplay!) and I am assured by both of them that it is really great fun to play too. That game is on some series crack, but it looks like being the good kind of crack.

Cosplay for that day was Sol and Millia from Guilty Gear for velithya and me, and FFVII for everyone else with us. Wall space was hard to get that day, but we managed to score a place right near one of the walkways with a bunch of really nice other FFVII cosplayers we’d just met… and that was about all we saw of a lot of our group for the rest of the day. FFVII is still hugely popular in Japan and we were in a really obvious place, so the group got mobbed by photographers for the next few hours straight.


The FF group, plus extras met on the day, plus this random Sol and Millia who are hanging around in the background =P (making this one of very few pics of almost all of us that got taken that day).

We made a point of leaving at 3 though, because we still hadn’t had time to go past the ArcSys booth yet and we’d found out that Ishiwatari Daisuke was going to be doing a signing session and we did not want to miss out on that. And this would be another bit where I’d better cut and leave most of the rest of that for the Guilty Gear report or I’m going on about it for ages, but for now, language barrier and all assorted issues I might have with recent games in the GG series aside, he’s really very cool in person, and that definitely counted as a highlight of the trip. Hell, the whole day did.

So that was it for the Tokyo Gameshow, but even that was is all pretty much just by way of leading up to the main cosplay event of the trip which was on the Monday after. As I mentioned before, we had the whole main cast of The World Ends With You, and if you’ve played the game you’d know that a crucial part of it is that it’s set in the suburb of Shibuya in Tokyo, and the subculture of the area was a major inspiration for the game. Way more than that, nearly all the locations in the game are directly based on places in Shibuya. This was not a chance for any dedicated cosplay group to pass up.

Unfortunately, because of scheduling stuff the Shibuya trip wound up getting crammed in to the few hours we had free between leaving the TGS hotel and heading for Osaka and we got there without much time before sunset made photography extra awkward – but we made great use of all the time we had and managed to find most of the really important locations from the game. Again, more stuff that deserves a whole report of its own, but I have to say you really can’t appreciate just what an incredible job they did with TWEWY until you’ve seen Shibuya in person – everything looks so much like the game does that you can quite literally use the in game map it to navigate around a lot of locations. Names of buildings and shops are changed, but only slightly, and the whole area looks so awesome that it’s really not hard to see why they chose to set a game there. Chalk it down as another very big trip highlight. pinneagig's already got a few of the good Shibuya photos up at her devart account, and you can count on us uploading a huge pile more just as soon as we get the chance to edit them all.

After that, it was finally time to take the shinkansen down to Osaka for a few blissful days of not having anywhere too urgent to be. We did a bit of the standard touristy stuff like going down to Himeji castle and even as far down as the floating temple at Miyajima (sadly, the tide was mostly out and it was getting dark by the time we got there and the Violet Plague was just setting in for me, but it was still pretty impressive). Mostly though we just kind of hung around near the hotel for a few days and took advantage of the awesome shopping that was to be found in the area, and generally took the chance to relax a bit.

The last major stop on the trip was going down to Beppu, which is a resort town down in one of the areas in Japan known for natural hot springs and other related touristy fun. Most of the people reading this will probably have heard of onsens, or Japanese public baths set in water that comes from natural hot springs – which are pretty common thanks to Japan’s excitingly volcanic character – since they crop up in anime and such an awful lot and are generally a very traditional kind of Japanese resort. The hotel we stayed at was certainly very traditional styled, with futons and tatami mats, though it was down on the beach front in a built up area and the main bath was up on the roof. We got to go up there a few times during the stay, including one time we got up early to watch the sun rise from up there. Yes, for those wondering, onsen standard practice requires being completely naked around a bunch of other people (of the same gender), many of them complete strangers, none of those modesty towels or bathing suits anywhere to be seen. But unless you’re especially nervy you get used to it very quickly – it’s really not seen as any kind of big deal over there. The water is so hot we didn’t stay in very long, but even allowing for that it was really nice up there, and it warms you up in a way that lasts a long time even if the weather’s a bit chilly. All up, a very pleasant experience.

While we were down there pinneagig and I also got to tour the town a bit and see some of the other more picturesque natural hot springs of the variety no-one would try swimming in because they were hot enough to boil eggs in (called the ‘seven hells tour’, presumably because of the heat, despite the fact in practice most of them were really pretty). You see steam rising from the ground all over the place around Beppu – it’s pretty incredible.









From there it was back to Osaka for a day or two, then back to Tokyo for another day or two before we left. More shopping including a trips to a several different second hand doujinshi stores where I discovered that the sort of doujinshi that you’ll pay up to $40 for online sells in Japan for the equivalent of about $2.10, and promptly acquired a massive pile of Guilty Gear swag (most of which had to be sent home by sea mail, unfortunately – my suitcase was getting pretty full). It’s kinda fascinating looking through those places – you can tell a lot about what’s popular by how large a section is. Reborn was huge in every store we looked it, and things like One Piece and Naruto are still going well too. There’s hardly any Kingdom Hearts though, apparently because Disney has part ownership and frowns on that sort of thing. Also hardly any WEWY, which disappointed us – maybe it’s a bit new to have made much of a dint in the second hand doujinshi market. Bleach seems to be surprisingly hard to find too, which confuses me because I’m pretty sure it’s still one of the big things over there now. And any section big enough gets broken up not by pairing as might be expected (excluding the gen section languishing away in the corner), but by character. Specifically, which character’s on the bottom. I’m sure this says a lot about the Japanese fangirl mentality, but I’m not sure I want to think about what.

That was about it for the trip. We almost went to Disney Land, but then there was this interesting domino evening of us all realising how much tickets were, how bad the exchange rate was and how bad the weather was likely to be and rapidly changing our minds. pinneagig and I also went back to Shibuya on the last day and ran around finding all the other locations from the game we’d missed the chance to find the first time and generally having a blast.

And then we all went home, irritated to discover that daylight savings meant we weren’t going to get back the hour we lost going over their until about April next year sometime.

Comments

[mushroom18.livejournal.com]

Awesome photos! It must be such an experience to cosplay IN Japan. ♥

[aphelion-orion.livejournal.com]

The cosplays look awesome.

And wow, the TGS sounds scary. I mean, it's seriously cool, but me? In a giant building? With a metric ton of people? Scary. XD

Whoo, onsen. I want to try one, one day. I wonder if it's any different from the thermal springs we have here... *needs to return to one*

[rallamajoop.livejournal.com]

Believe me, it was. *eg* Though I should have mentioned, pinneagig took most of those photos. She's the one with the uber-expensive camera and all the actual photographic talent around here.

[http://users.livejournal.com/drayke_/]

Wow. You all look *awesome*.
Sounds like you guys had an absolutely fantastic time :)

[sethyhide.livejournal.com]

That's really really cool!
I'll keep an eye out for the next issue of Layers.

[rallamajoop.livejournal.com]

And we haven't even posted hardly any of the good photos yet too~

I found the TGS more exciting than intimidating mostly, but if you don't deal well with crowds it would not be so much fun. Where we come from we don't have anything like on that kind of scale anywhere.

I wonder if it's any different from the thermal springs we have here... *needs to return to one*

Probably mostly depends on whether you have large public baths set up in them. ^^; Otherwise, I would guess hot water is mostly just hot water (no matter what they try to tell you about natural minerals and all the rest).

[rallamajoop.livejournal.com]

Thanks. ^_^ Oh yeah - I've been meaning to thank you for the heads up on where I could get those nerf guns from. They'll be appearing all through a lot of the photos we've still got to post. *g*

[http://users.livejournal.com/drayke_/]

hahaha so they worked well? Cool :)
Looking forward to seeing all of the photos!

[rallamajoop.livejournal.com]

I know we will be! *g* Though at this stage I don't even know when it's coming out, or whether they even necessarily use photos of every cosplayer they take photos of on the day. ^^; Guess we'll just have to wait to find out.

[rallamajoop.livejournal.com]

They were a bit fiddly to paint neatly and a bit larger than they technically should be, but other than that they worked out great.

[aphelion-orion.livejournal.com]

8DDD I shall patiently yet eagerly anticipate this grand posting.

Well, I can deal with crowds better, ironically, if I'm in a crowd myself. *laughs* I think if I were all alone, I'd be terrified. But being with friends wouldn't be so bad, I think.

Where we come from we don't have anything like on that kind of scale anywhere.
Oh, tell me about it. 120,000 people town, and all that. The Canadians were boggling so hard when I told them you could fit half my country into Toronto. XD

Well, not exactly public baths... more like swimming pools with larger pools where you can sit around and relax. But everybody wears swimsuits. I liked the different kinds of water a lot when I went to the thermal springs here... they had some with sulfur, and others that were a bit salty. Felt nice. But I think it'd be a lot different to actually sit in one of those natural or semi-natural ones.

[phred-has-sonar.livejournal.com]

The important thing is, you guys got to all the places in Shibuya you needed to be before the timers on your hands ran out.

Glad you had such an awesome time :D

[rallamajoop.livejournal.com]

8DDD I shall patiently yet eagerly anticipate this grand posting.

^^; It's going to be more like several grand postings. I've still got all the photos from Melbourne to sort out before I even get to the Japan ones oh god. Should have some of those up later today.

Well, I can deal with crowds better, ironically, if I'm in a crowd myself. *laughs* I think if I were all alone, I'd be terrified. But being with friends wouldn't be so bad, I think.

*nodnod* It would have been a different story if I hadn't been there with friends - though just as much because having three of them who could speak the language made everything easier. We were probably lucky no-one got separated from the rest of us during all that. The press around that Squeenix booth when they were giving out the tickets got seriously nasty.

Oh, tell me about it. 120,000 people town, and all that. The Canadians were boggling so hard when I told them you could fit half my country into Toronto. XD

Our city's about ten times that size, but that's still pretty small by big city standards, not to mention being about the most isolated city in the world. According to Wikipedia there were more than 190,000 people at the TGS this year (whether this counts people who did or didn't come both days I'm not sure), which is just mindblowing.

But I think it'd be a lot different to actually sit in one of those natural or semi-natural ones.

It probably would be, but we didn't get to try it. ^^; As I mentioned, the main bath at the hotel was up on the roof, so the water was getting piped a long way up there. Still very pleasant, if still a long way from all those traditional outdoors onsen anime scenes also the hotel no table tennis, which we were very bitter about.

[rallamajoop.livejournal.com]

Haha, we did cut it a little close there. The final seconds must've ticking away by the time we were done. *g*